Beyond the Misty Shore (6 page)

He scrubbed the pan lid until she thought the enamel would be worn clean through. An apple in the fruit bowl looked entirely too tempting. She grabbed it. Sidling up to MacGregor at the sink, she stole the stream of water he was using to rinse the pan, and washed off her apple. Lord, but it irked her to look at his shoulder. To see his face, she’d have to crane her neck. “Thanks.”

“You always eat so much?”

She took a crunchy bite. It was sweet and firm—perfect. “Yes, I do.”

He held out a clean plate, waiting for her to take it. “Better watch it. Your metabolism might shut down on you.”

Droplets of water sprinkled steadily onto the floor. “You think I’m fat?”

“Not yet.”

The man sounded about as interested as if he’d been discussing drippy weather. Good thing she wasn’t in this for an ego boost. Her mother’s flatter-than-a-flitter expression regarding stomachs took on a whole new meaning. “Hate to break it to you, MacGregor, but your sleeve is getting soaked.”

“It’ll dry.” He reached into the sink and pulled out the plug. “Good night.”

“Good night.” So much for accomplishing anything tonight. She munched her disappointment, taking it out on the apple, still having no idea why the man was here.

T.J. turned out the dining room light,
then just stood there in the darkness. Maggie Wright worried him. She was a beautiful woman who watched him like a hawk. It wasn’t an appreciative woman/man kind of look, though. More like she expected at any second he’d sprout a spare head.

He leaned back against the wall and let his fingertips drift over the smooth, wainscoted wood. Worse, he couldn’t, shake the feeling that her seemingly innocent questions actually were pointed and razor-sharp. He told himself again that she’d just been making polite conversation with a stranger, but he didn’t believe it. Though he knew he couldn’t trust his instincts, he wished he could, because she sure didn’t strike him as a woman on a resting vacation.

An odd tingling started in his toes.

It worked its way up his legs, crept through his stomach, then spread through his chest and up his neck, into his head. What the hell was happening to him now?

He tried to move and couldn’t. Knowing only Maggie Wright would hear him, he tried to yell out, but he couldn’t make a sound.

The grandfather clock ticked louder and louder until it pounded inside his head, blocking out all other sounds. The rhythm suddenly altered to a deep, melodic whisper. It wasn’t a trick of the mind. He heard a whisper. A man’s whisper. A message meant for him. A warning.

She’s on a mission. On a mission. On a mission...

The whisper ceased.

The clock’s ticks returned to normal, then softened, and the sounds of the house, of the sleet slanting against the roof and pinging against the windows, returned. And, as suddenly as it had started, the tingling inside his body stopped.

Shaky, T.J. dragged in a great gulp of air, but didn’t risk trying to move. Instinctively he knew the room was empty. So who had whispered that message to warn him? Who... or what?

He was losing it. It couldn’t have happened. It had to have been his imagination. Of course, it had been. Stress-induced. Not insane, but psychological—just as Bill Butler had said.

Footsteps sounded. Seconds later, Maggie walked down the gallery toward the stairs, humming and clearly not realizing T.J. stood there in the darkness.

She’s on a mission.

Wary, T.J. followed her.

Midway up the stairs, she stopped and studied Cecelia Freeport’s painting, touching the canvas with delicate fingertips, as if it were fragile glass she feared would shatter.

Carolyn crossed his mind. She and Maggie didn’t resemble each other, or even stand or move alike. But the way Maggie touched Cecelia’s painting bitterly reminded T.J. of the way Carolyn had caressed his painting of Seascape Inn. God, had she given him grief over that painting.

Her guard down, Maggie let out a sigh that T.J. felt in his bones. Because he suffered the same malady, he recognized it instantly in her. The woman was in trouble.

But what kind of trouble? Was it the reason she’d come here? What was her mission?

When she walked on, he took to the stairs, pausing and touching Cecelia’s painting as Maggie had. Warmed by the overhead light, the paint felt smooth, though the canvas beneath it added substance and texture. Paint reminded him a lot of skin.

A warm spark of heat ignited inside him. A flicker of healing, of peace. Only a flicker, but God how he savored it. His eyes filmed over and he blinked hard. It’d been so long since he’d felt either.

“MacGregor!”

Startled, he jumped, jerked his hand away from the canvas and stared up the stairs to the landing. Empty. Ah, she’d found them. And she was indignant as hell about finding them.

Grinning, he rushed upstairs.

At the landing, he paused and deliberately slowed his pace to a swagger. “You bellowed, Miss Wright?”

Standing outside the door to her room, she snatched her underwear off the doorknob. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He leaned a shoulder against the hallway wall and crossed his chest with his arms. “You mean you didn’t want your underwear back?”

“Where did you get them?” She perched a hand on her hip. “Have you been in my room?”

“You left them in the bathroom.”

Narrowing her eyes, she balled the fragile snippet of lace in her fist. “If you hadn’t nagged and threatened me out of the bathroom, I wouldn’t have forgotten them there.” She marched back to him, her shoulders stiff enough to snap. “Was it really necessary to hang them on my doorknob?”

“No.” He shrugged. “But I figured you’d take exception to me putting them in your room.”

“You could’ve just left them in the bathroom.”

He slid her his best innocent look. “You mean you weren’t issuing me an invitation?”

Her face went apple-red and her shoulders hiked up a full three inches. “Fat chance.”

“Mmm, then I highly recommend you be more careful about the signals you’re sending.”

Her jaw gaped. She sputtered. Sent him a glower he’d still be feeling in his grave. Then turned and stormed down the hall, back to her room.

Holding the doorknob in a death grip, she looked back at him. “You are one arrogant jerk, MacGregor. So arrogant it’s hard to believe you can stuff all your arrogance inside your body.”

“Thank you.” He smiled.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Sounded like one from here.”

“A walking miracle,” she muttered, convinced that was absolute truth. It
was
a miracle no one had killed him yet.

“Haven’t you heard, Maggie? There are no miracles.”

He stepped into his room and softly shut the door.

A pang of pity slid through her, head to heels.

What was that all about? The man deserved a lot of things, but pity sure didn’t rank among them. Still, she would rather he’d yelled at her again than sounded so disillusioned. He’d looked disillusioned, too. And despairing. No.

No, not despairing.

He’d looked... haunted.

Chapter 3

“I still think we should put a pad on the rocks, Tyler.” Huddled deep in her sturdy black coat, Miss Hattie slid him a worried look, her stiff collar hiked up around her ears.

“We can’t risk it.” Bill Butler sniffled, his nose buried in a forest-green muffler. “Anything straddling the boundary could extend it. We won’t know if the painting worked or not.”

“He’s right.” T.J. curled his fingers around the painting’s frame, avoiding eye contact with the canvas he’d painted of Seascape Inn. He gripped it so hard that his red fingertips turned white.

“All right.” Miss Hattie blinked, stuffed her hands deep into her pockets. “I agree it makes sense and it could have an effect. But, Tyler, you must believe in your heart that this is going to work. I would say that’s vitally important.”

He couldn’t believe it. How could he? He hoped—good God, how he hoped—it would work, but he didn’t dare to believe it. Live with another failure? See another little piece of himself die? No, he didn’t dare to believe. He’d lost too many of those he’d loved and far too much of himself already.

Still, Miss Hattie looked so worried. She needed the lie, and he couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing her. “I’ll believe it,” he told her then quickly looked at Bill. She was too intuitive, and she’d told him a hundred times that his eyes mirrored his soul. Even if she couldn’t see the truth, looking into her eyes and deliberately lying to her rankled—regardless that he’d done it for her own peace of mind.

Bill locked gazes with T.J. and gave him an encouraging nod. His gentle umber eyes shone support and approval. He knew the truth. He knew T.J. didn’t dare to believe the painting would work. And his friend’s silent message was that he understood and believed enough for both of them.

Swallowing hard, praying that friendship with him didn’t somehow kill Bill, too, T.J. nodded back and stepped up to the invisible boundary line. Sweat trickled down his temples, rolled over his ribs. He dragged his foot through the coarse sand, drawing the line, then closed his eyes and focused hard, concentrating all of his energy on the healing he’d once received at Seascape Inn. The healing that had restored his ability to create the painting he now held in his hands. The painting Bill and Miss Hattie—and half the time he—hoped would act as a conduit to his subconscious to free him from Seascape.

Images flashed through his mind. Images of him arriving here, all those years ago. Images of him feeling that sense
of peace and calm and serenity that Maggie Wright had been feeling, and T.J. had been envying, last night at dinner.

She’d been right, too. Seascape Inn
was
special. Very special.

Another image flashed. He saw himself crossing the line, walking into the village and waving to Jimmy, whose long, brown hair needed a trim. Though in a squat, changing a flat tire on Horace Johnson’s dusty blue ‘53 GMC pick-up truck, Jimmy paused to wave back. His brown eyes never missed a thing—by necessity, T.J. supposed. Jimmy had always had to look out for himself. T.J. walked on, then paused again at Miss Millie’s Antique Shoppe’s big window. Sitting in her rocker, she sipped at a cup of steaming tea, enjoying the warmth from her Franklin stove. He smelled the wood burning, heard its friendly popping. Next door, Fred Baker was sweeping the porch of the Blue Moon Cafe, hiding the dirt behind a huge anchor propped against the wall, his gold nugget ring catching the sunlight and, across the street, the stuffy, social-climbing Lydia Johnson, who’d renamed herself Lily years ago because it sounded more regal to her, stood near the gas pumps at The Store, overdressed and all excited, telling the pastor about her and Horace’s new Slurpee drink machine. “It’s the height of modernization,” she said, preening. T.J. shunned the urge to shake some sense into her. The woman wanted it all and was so busy running after it all that she didn’t realize she already had everything worth having: her family’s love.

Pulling the sights and sounds and smells of small-town life into his heart and holding them close, T.J. issued himself his standard pre-attempt reminder, then stepped across the line.

For a long moment, he stood there feeling as if he were dangling at the edge of some invisible, mystical precipice. Hope flared in his heart. The wind burned his eyes, but he was afraid to blink. If he moved, would he break the magical spell and fall?

His instincts screamed at him to run, but he couldn’t move. Seemingly suspended in this mysterious place that was neither there nor here, he felt torn, at war with himself. Did he risk taking another step? Did he risk losing what could prove to be his only opportunity to run for his life?

He had to run!

As quickly as the thought properly formed, the temperature plummeted.

That veil of icy mist blanketed him.

Those hated fingers of cold applied debilitating pressure at the soft hollow of his shoulder. And his hope died.

“Nooo!”
he screamed.
“Nooo!”

What on earth were they doing out there?

Kneeling on the turret’s window seat in her room, Maggie sank into the soft cushion pads and leaned closer to the glass. Bill and Miss Hattie stood watching MacGregor as if he were about to singlehandedly evoke the Second Coming.

Thank goodness she’d phoned Bill last night and asked him not to mention she and Carolyn had been related. It had taken some talking, but he’d finally agreed. Too, he’d imparted an interesting bit of information. MacGregor believed Carolyn had been an orphan. Technically, that had been true, but why hadn’t she mentioned Maggie’s parents or Maggie to him? She’d lived with the family from the time she’d been orphaned at twelve until she’d graduated high school.

Miss Hattie and Bill backed away from MacGregor. Why was he standing on the rocks holding the painting from Lakeview Gallery of Seascape Inn? Why was he drawing a line in the sand with his foot?

He closed his eyes and just stood there. Maggie clocked him on her watch. A minute, twenty-four seconds. Was he praying? Meditating? What?

He stepped over the line. Just stood there, still and stiff as a statue. Maggie glanced at Miss Hattie—definitely worried—and then at Bill. Hands clenched at his sides, he looked serious. Solemn. Scared.

MacGregor jerked. The painting flew through the air toward Bill as if MacGregor had tossed it. Bill caught it, and Maggie looked back at MacGregor just as he spun around. He glared back at the house, an expression of horror, then sheer terror, on his face, and he screamed:
“Nooo! Nooo!”

Maggie gripped the window sash and squeezed. MacGregor was swinging his fists. What was he fighting? There was nothing there. And why were Miss Hattie and Bill just... standing there watching him? Not trying to calm him down? Not moving an inch toward him? Should Maggie go down there?

MacGregor slapped his left hand to his right shoulder, gripping and grimacing and bending and twisting, as if trying to release himself from some godawful, wrenching hold. What was happening to him? Was he having some kind of seizure?

It couldn’t be. Certainty slammed into her with the force of a sledge. Whatever was happening to him, Miss Hattie and Bill Butler had expected it. Miss Hattie’s lack of alarm proved it. Bill’s lack of assistance verified it.

MacGregor fell to the ground.

Maggie watched, horrified. She couldn’t move.

Bill calmly walked over to MacGregor, circled the larger man from behind, wrapping his arms around MacGregor’s ribs, then dragged him over the rocks back onto what must be the Seascape side of the line T.J. had marked. Gently, Bill lowered MacGregor back to the ground, released him, then backed away.

When Miss Hattie bent down, Bill retrieved the painting and checked it over. Looking for damage? Miss Hattie did the same thing to MacGregor, running her hands over his scalp. Evidently she was satisfied that he wasn’t seriously hurt because she reached beneath her coat and into her apron pocket, withdrew her hankie, then fluttered it over MacGregor’s face.

Was he unconscious?

This was definitely strange. Shocking and strange. Something glinted on the window and Maggie shifted to see past it, her heart thumping hard in her chest. Frankly, this whole episode went beyond strange. It was weird. Dark and—

Oh, no. It couldn’t be some kind of cult ritual. Miss Hattie? Bill? Involved in a cult? Not even MacGregor could be involved in a cult.

So what
was
going on?

MacGregor sat up, rubbed at the back of his head, and said something to Miss Hattie, who was fussing over him, plucking dry, dead grass from his coat and hair.

They talked back and forth, with Bill adding something intermittently, then Bill and Miss Hattie began walking back toward the house.

Miss Hattie glanced up at Maggie’s window.

To avoid being seen, Maggie leaned back, away from the glass. But it wasn’t her window Miss Hattie stared at as if she were highly peeved. It was the attic bedroom window—or maybe the room below it. But why would Miss Hattie be glowering at her own rooms?

When they walked under the porch roof below her own windows, Maggie could no longer see them. She darted her gaze back to MacGregor. Where had he gone?

He hadn’t moved.

His shoulders slumped, knees bent, feet flat on the brown grass, he sat on the rocks, looking out through the sheer haze to the open sea.

Waves of despair washed through Maggie. Despair she somehow knew was his. He had been in physical pain during the course of whatever had been happening out there, but now that it was over, his pain hadn’t subsided. It had strengthened and deepened, invaded his spirit and soul, and she felt it as if it were her own pain.

Stunned, weakened by its powerful force, she rested her forehead against the glass and fought letting the sympathetic tears blurring her eyes fall to her face. Maggie Wright
never
cried.

An unbidden thought spilled through her mind on a whisper.
Help him.

On Saturday, Maggie witnessed the same scene again, minus Bill and Miss Hattie, who for reasons unknown to Maggie were absent.

On Sunday, shortly after Miss Hattie had left for church, Maggie watched MacGregor’s third attempt. Watched him fail. Watched him then sit on the rocks and stare out to sea for over two hours. And again she suffered those same waves of despair. Heard that same muffled but calm and insistent voice whisper:
Help him.

Maggie wanted to help him. It was frightening to watch him fall, and it sickened her that she had watched and hadn’t lifted a finger much less rushed out to see if he was all right. She would have. She’d tried. But for some mystical reason, when
he
had fallen,
she
hadn’t been able to move.

It was as if some unseen hand held her there on the cushions at the window, reducing her to doing no more than watching, waiting, holding her breath and gripping the window sash so tightly her arms ached to her elbows, until MacGregor sat up and she saw with her own two eyes that he was okay.

She denied it at first. But each time she witnessed his attempt and failure, the waves of despair in her grew stronger, hurt her deeper. Each time, the calm, steady whisper grew a little louder and clearer, a little more insistent—and a lot more frightening.

T.J. grabbed the bannister,
started up the stairs, and saw Maggie, standing looking at Cecelia’s portrait. He walked on, then stopped three steps below her.

“Who are they, MacGregor?”

Her question surprised him. She hadn’t shown a sign of knowing him there. “The Freeports bought the land from the Stanfords and built this house in 1918. Collin carved all those boats and fowl in the case in the living room. Talented man.”

“I’ll have to go look at them. Haven’t made it down there yet.” Maggie leaned back against the bannister. “What about her?”

MacGregor leaned back, too. His arm brushed against Maggie’s shoulder. That she didn’t move away pleased him. After yet another failure, the warmth of another person, even impersonal and seemingly innocent warmth, felt good. “Cecelia assisted the village doctor until he died. For years, she and Collin tried to find another doctor to come to the village, but they never did. The locals kept coming to Cecelia to treat them.”

“Did she?”

“As much as possible, yes, she did.”

“A healer.” Maggie looked up at him and smiled. “I sensed she was special.”

“She must have been.” The urge to paint Maggie seeped through T.J.’s chest, into his arms, and set his fingers to itching to pick up a brush. Knowing the futility and frustration that attempt would bring, he buried the urge deep inside
him, then folded his arms across his chest to hold it there. “They say the night Cecelia died, hundreds of villagers and people she’d helped came out into the bitter cold and held a candlelight vigil on the front lawn. Mothers with babies she’d brought into the world, those she’d healed and kept from prematurely departing it. Must have been something.”

“Mmm, kind of makes you feel if you aren’t as devoted to others as she was, you’re just taking up space, doesn’t it?” Maggie studied Cecelia’s face, as if trying to figure out something. “What do you think it is, MacGregor? Do the rest of us lack some special gene or something?”